California Conference

Rome 2017

Fatima Portugal

Ask Father

Francis Denies He's an "Anti-Pope"

by Christopher A. Ferrara
Octover 6, 2015

“Maybe I have given an impression of being a little bit to the left,” Pope Francis admitted during his in-flight press conference on the way from Cuba to the United States. “But if they want me to recite the Creed, I can!” This curiously flippant remark came in the context of the Pope mentioning a cardinal who had told him of a woman who believes that he is “the anti-pope” because “he renounced the red shoes, which are so historic.” The concerns of people who view Francis as an anti-Pope are a bit weightier than his refusal of the red shoes in favor of custom-made orthotics. What is absolutely remarkable, however, is that the Pope himself would casually air such an accusation against him.

Why was the accusation even aired? The obvious answer is that we are confronted with the unprecedented example of a Pope whose seemingly endless stream of shocking words and deeds has prompted a considerable number of Catholics, and not just sedevacantists, to seize on the proposition that he is no Pope at all. For example, both Antonio Socci and Ann Banhardt openly entertain the “anti-Pope” hypothesis based on arguments about the application of John Paul II’s Universi Dominici Gregis, which declares the automatic excommunication of any cardinal-elector involved in “any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to” a particular papal candidate, and also declares void any promise among cardinals to pursue “a certain course of action should one of them be elevated to the Pontificate.”

Such excommunications, even if they occurred in this case, would not invalidate the papal election in itself. But an interesting question is presented as to who, in fact, would have been excommunicated for violating the terms of Dominici Gregis during the last conclave. In view of recent revelations by Edward Pentin, I propose two candidates: Cardinal Danneels and Cardinal Kasper. As Pentin reports, during an interview concerning a new biography about himself, Cardinal Danneels admitted that he

was part of a secret club of cardinals opposed to Pope Benedict XVI. He called it a ‘mafia’ club that bore the name of St. Gallen. The group wanted a drastic reform of the Church, to make it ‘much more modern,’ and for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to head it. The group, which also comprised Cardinal Walter Kasper and the late Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, has been documented in Austen Ivereigh's biography of Pope Francis.

If Danneels and Kasper were part of a group that connived to round up votes for Bergoglio, they would have fallen under the penalty of excommunication even if, as later reported, the Gallen group did not meet formally after failing to obtain Cardinal Bergoglio’s election at the conclave of 2005. Thus they would have remained excommunicated as of the conclave of 2013.

I cannot imagine two fitter candidates for excommunication: Danneels covered up the homosexual molestation of boys by Mgr. Roger Vangheluwe, wrote in support of “same-sex marriage” in Belgium, and, as Pentin notes, advised the King of Belgium to sign its new abortion law. Kasper, under the guise of “mercy,” has been promoting Holy Communion for public adulterers for more than twenty years and has a long Modernist paper trail of denying or undermining Catholic doctrine (the historicity of the apostolic succession, the miracles of Jesus, the immutability of God, etc.).

Given that both Danneels and Kasper were part of a cabal agitating for the election of Cardinal Bergoglio, is it a coincidence that Pope Francis has been promoting Cardinal Kasper’s heretical notion of “mercy” almost from the moment of his election, especially at Synod 2014, and that he has personally appointed both Kasper and Danneels to Synod 2015? Make of it what you will. In any case, it’s all part of the scenario foretold in the Third Secret of Fatima, unfolding before us at this very moment in “a really terrifying way,” to quote the astonishing revelation of Pope Benedict XVI, a “Bishop dressed in White.”